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A quick review of a new Radio Meteor Data Logger that tackles head echoes


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I have been trialing a new meteor data logger and analyser that is written by Wolfgang Kaufmann.  It has been around for a couple of years and I have now just got round to trying out properly.  I wish I had checked this out a lot earlier  - now I think we can do some serious analysis of radio meteor and perhaps do some science!

There are two Python applications: one logs the data and the other processes it.  The apps can be found at http://www.ars-electromagnetica.de/robs/download.html and there are links to his IMO paper which describes it.  The big thing here is that the program logs track all meteor tracks - specular, long duratoion and  head echoes .

For my tests I ran a FCDP+ with HDSDR and used a VAC to connect to Specrtum Lab using the set up I usually use for routine logging and also to the Python Logger. I ran it for about 20 days in September - a non-shower period.  The csv file produced was over 25Mbytes.  This is loaded into the Process Data App where cleaning and conflation (joining seperataed parts of a track broken by GRAVES switching) is first done.  The App has a number of functions that analyses the data.  Underdernse , overdense, long duration, distributions, hourly counts RMOB output are all catered for.  The head echo frequency slope is a particlualrly interesting plot and is employed in WGN 46:6 (2018) pp 201 -204 in an investigation of sporadic meteor radiants and dynamics.  Below is a first look at my own data and I can see a bit of study is going to be requirefd 🙂 

figure_1.png.3ebcafbab409ba55ef8b9365008cbdd5.png

The Process Data App can also generate a number of csv files for overdense data, under dense head echoes etc.  I give a selection of plots I have made from these data in the pdf below

Meteor Logger Output.pdf

The pdf shows  the detail of the Meteor Logger data and compares it with Spectrum Lab specrotgrammes .  

The programs do require the Python interpretor to be running and there is a learning curve to go up (I am only just started) and there are significant amounts of data that can be used in analysis.  I will be moving this program into routine use and start looking at the data as I have never been able to before 🙂 I think it is well woth the efoort for the serious radio meteor observer.

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  • 3 weeks later...
  • 4 weeks later...

I've downloaded/installed the SW and am looking at the data it's producing off one of my youtube streams (SDRMusings if you care to look.) I've become more interested in head echoes recently and this SW looks like a good way for logging them. So now that I'm accumulating data in a CSV file, is there anything out there for data reduction/display or is that a DIY project? Don't have MS Office/Xcel on any of my personal computers. Guess could install something open source like OpenOffice or LibreOffice.

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Just an update got it running despite that startup error message. Some short runs do produce scatter plots, so I'm running it now continuously and will let it go for a couple more days, then lets see what I got. Peaks rates thus far are about 200 hits per hour, though there are fair amount of erroneous hits due to deep fading. Hopefully that can be minimized via conflation.

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  • 1 year later...
On 06/11/2019 at 13:24, Werner Roland said:

Aha. Didn't look down far enough on download page. Found the process data script and been trying to open CSV file, but get an error message about time data not matching format. Did you get this error Nebula?

I get the error you mention - "ValueError: time data 'x x.000' does not match format '%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S.%f'"

 

How did you solve it ?

Regards John B

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  • 4 months later...

I realise this is an old thread, but I’ve just started running this a few days ago with an RTL-SDR feeding in to spectrum lab. I’m planning to let it run through to the end of the Perseids and see what I get…

I managed to process a few sets of data in the time when I was tweaking settings, so no real value in the output, but at least the process works so I should be good to go in a week or so.

I’ve also been tweaking the script so it can run on a Raspberry Pi (my preferred devices for low power 24x7 operations)…. It’s a bit untidy at present, but I think it’ll work receiving the output as a UDP data stream from GQRX…. Will test that more thoroughly in a couple of weeks if anybody is interested.

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